Already, the blow-back from Israel 's turbo-charged assault on Gaza has seen the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Europe and the USA leap exponentially.

In the UK daubings and desecrations of Jewish buildings, verbal abuse and isolated physical attacks a pogrom don't make, but the anti-Semitic static crackling through the Gaza antennae is increasingly unnerving.

The real nightmare is a band of terrorists doing a 'Buenos Aires' (when 85 people were killed in a bombing of a Jewish community centre in 1994) and indeed the Israeli press was recently abuzz with rumours of a thwarted Hezbollah spectacular in Europe.

'PERIFIDIOUS JEWS'

Meanwhile, Holocaust denial (i.e. killing dead Jews) has reared its vile head in the controversy over the Pope's reinstatement of Bishop Williamson (winner of the 2009 Ahmadinejad Award for most perfidious priest).

This liar in a mitre was welcomed back initially with little more than an insociciant shrug by the Holy See.

Jewish-Catholic relations were already rattled by disputes over traditionalist prayers and a compromised pope.

In January there was a spat over the prayers in the 1962 pre-Vatican II Latin Missal (whose wider use is being encouraged by Pope Benedict XVI) incanted at Easter containing an offensive reference to "perfidious Jews".

Apologists claim it has an innocent meaning; merely indicting Jews as unbelievers, rather than a landmark slur that for centuries marked Easter as the start of the Jew hunting season.

Prior, there was much bickering over the wartime Pope Pius XII currently being fast-tracked to sainthood but whose moral-compass on the Third Reich, opponents argue, managed to vaguely point in the right direction on a pitifully few number of occasions.

BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A BILLION DOLLARS?

Then there are the economic woes of our age and dire warnings that it is the worst of times since the 1930s.

This sends a shiver down the Jewish spine. The misery Great Depression was ultimately distilled into the Devil's Brew that was the Final Solution.

Will it happen again? Will the spike in anti-Semitics incidents gel into a significant threat?

I am cautiously optimistic that the Jewish Diaspora – empowered by the existence of the state of Israel – can successfully resist a new anti-Semitic challenge.

One fear is that the myth of the Jewish banking conspiracy will be resurrected to exploit the fears of people faced with losing their jobs and homes.

Apparently, American neo-Nazis have already toyed with resurrecting this tactic and drawn a blank. The bankers, they found, rather than being viewed as sinister, super-intelligent arch villains, were seen in the court of public opinion as a bunch of incompetent Rolex-wearing clowns.

Hence, Edgar M. Bronfman, one of the USA 's most influential Jews and former president of the World Jewish Congress, last month declared that, "anti-Semitism is no longer a significant force in American life."

Likewise, in the UK , a mature and civilised liberal democracy, the lessons of theHolocaust have been listened to and learnt.

Indeed, the British people – From Cable Street , to the Anti-Nazi League – have a proud anti-Fascist tradition, and Anglo-Jewry has never 'bottled it' in the face of violent threats.

Since the sixties, anti-racism campaigns and multiculturalism (at times a dirty word in the Telegraph parish) have helped forge a tolerant British society in which the majority despise bigotry.

PRAISE BE TO EL AL

For example, when a Foreign Office (the government department long considered to be a last redoubt of upper-class anti-Semitism) diplomat openly abuses Jews, his fellow citizens immediately report him to the police. In the 1930s they would have either nodded in agreement or passively looked the other way.

In fact, it is here in this libertarian online world where anti-Semites have retreated to, pariahs in the real world.

On the world wide web the paranoid crazies roam the chat-rooms and comment threads and, like naughty children shouting puerile insults through a neighbour's letter box, seek to poison the blogosphere before scuttling back to the dank basements of their own inadequacies.

As for Europe, the situation is a positive-negative. The Holocaust did its work destroying a Jewish civilisation and the contemporary communities are indistinct shadows of their pre-war glory.

Outside France there is no country with a critical mass of Jews large enough to make a viable target.

Those looking for a scapegoat have post-colonial guest workers, desperate asylum seekers and impoverished illegals to round on. Most of all, and rich in irony, Muslims are now Europe 's 'new Jews.'

In the former Soviet Union there is more cause for concern. Age-old hatreds are never far from the surface and unchallenged and the super-rich oligarchs with Jewish sounding names will become the lightening rode for the blame game as the slump sets in.

Ukraine, home to 200,000 Jews, has been identified as a leading candidate for the 21st century's first concerted outbreak of violent anti-Semitism when, if need be, the 747's of Israel's national carrier will be ready and waiting.